The private sector and public space in Dutch city centres Rianne Van Melik * , Irina Van Aalst, Jan Van Weesep Faculty of Geosciences, Utrecht University, P.O. Box 80.115, 3508 TC Utrecht, The Netherlands article info Article history: Received 5 September 2007 Received in revised form 6 March 2009 Accepted 18 April 2009 Available online 19 May 2009 Keywords: Public space Private sector Redevelopment budget Public access Dutch city squares abstract Private sector involvement in the design and financing of urban redevelopment projects has been rela- tively rare in the Netherlands. The public sector has traditionally played a central role in spatial planning and development. Since the 1980s, however, local authorities have been sharing the responsibility for urban development with the private sector. This article explores the viability of claims drawn from the literature about the effects of private sector involvement in redeveloped public space. Confronting those claims with our empirical material, we expected to find that the participation of the private sector would increase the redevelopment budget but would also lead to restrictions on public access. These two expec- tations are evaluated in light of the experience in four redeveloped squares in four Dutch cities: Rotter- dam, Dordrecht, Enschede and ’s-Hertogenbosch. We found that actors on the public and private sides have different interpretations of what constitutes a direct financial contribution. Those from the private sector believe they have made significant contributions, while those from the public sector see them- selves as the sole funders. But they agree on the issue of free access: both public and private actors deny any negative effects of private sector involvement in this respect. Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Introduction The private sector has long played a role in the design and man- agement of public space, although the intensity of its participation has varied by place and period (Punter, 1990; Mitchell, 1995; Cybriwsky, 1999; Bell, 2005). A prominent role for the private sec- tor in urban development is still common in countries such as the United States and the United Kingdom, where businesses and civic organizations may provide for public spaces through business improvement districts or town centre management (Symes and Steel, 2003). Alternatively, private owners may be encouraged by government incentives to provide publicly accessible space on their property or on their premises (Kayden, 2000). Such forms of private sector involvement have been relatively rare in the Nether- lands, where the spatial planning and development tradition re- serves a central role for the national government (Priemus, 2002). However, since the 1980s, Dutch urban development has increasingly been approached from an ‘entrepreneurial’ perspec- tive, whereby responsibility has been devolved from the national to the local government and even to the private sector. The ques- tion is, to what extent does increased private sector involvement affect public spaces once they have been redeveloped? Private sector actors can influence the redevelopment of public space in a number of ways. According to Beauregard and Haila (1997), the participation of large property developers and investors makes it more likely that big projects will actually be completed. With more stakeholders, though, the decision-making process may become more complicated and time-consuming. Bringing more parties into the process could also heighten the need to compromise, which might lower the quality of the project. On the other hand, pri- vate sector involvement could improve the coherence between the public space and adjacent private properties, since an area could be developed as an entity rather than in a piecemeal manner. We have explored these claims in previous research by confronting them with the experience of redevelopment in four Dutch cities (Van Melik, 2008, pp. 175–179). There, we found more coherence between buildings and the public space in cases where the private sector had joined in the redevelopment process. Our research also showed that the long duration of redevelopment projects (6–10 years from the first plans to completion) is more the result of added regulation and the increasing complexity of society than of the involvement of the private sector. Furthermore, the projects we investigated showed no evidence of compromise on quality. In the present study, we put two other claims to the test. The first one is that private sector involvement leads to increased bud- gets, and that this in turn makes for better quality in the design and management of public space. We base our expectations on the work of Punter (1990), who observed a growing awareness among investors and developers of the benefits offered by good quality in the public realm. These parties are motivated by the opportunity to appropriate the development value of the site and enhance its long-term potential to generate revenue. Their rationale is that public space of good quality facilitates the sale or lease of the 0264-2751/$ - see front matter Ó 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. doi:10.1016/j.cities.2009.04.002 * Corresponding author. Tel.: +31 30 2532017; fax: +31 30 2532037. E-mail address: r.vanmelik@geo.uu.nl (R. Van Melik). Cities 26 (2009) 202–209 Contents lists available at ScienceDirect Cities journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/cities